Debate settled, at the highest level. Pedro Sánchez cleared up any doubts in this regard yesterday and flatly rejected that judges could be called to testify before the investigative commissions opened in this new legislature in the Congress of Deputies.
And this, despite the fact that both Junts and ERC plan to summon magistrates, to influence the alleged cases of lawfare against the Catalan independence movement that are denounced by the judicial establishment, in the parliamentary commissions on the Catalunya operation and on espionage on political leaders. Catalans with the Pegasus program. The President of the Government yesterday expressed his complete disagreement with summoning the judges to give statements in Congress about processes in which they have intervened. This means that the PSOE will vote against the inclusion of magistrates in the lists of those appearing in these investigative commissions.
Government sources warn, in this sense, that the organic law of the Judiciary protects judges from responding to the call to appear before a congressional investigative commission, despite the fact that this rule conflicts with the provisions of the Penal Code. and in the regulations of the Lower House itself.
The socialists claim that they always respect full judicial independence, the work of judges and magistrates and the separation of powers, which is why they ensure that the investigation commissions agreed with Junts and ERC, to be agreed upon by the Congress Board at the beginning of the legislature, In no case will they involve the review of judicial sentences or resolutions, or that Parliament will supervise the judges.
The Minister of the Presidency, Justice and Relations with the Courts, Félix Bolaños, confirmed yesterday that “the law itself establishes that judges and magistrates have no obligation to attend investigative commissions.” But, in addition, he stressed that there would be “no use” for a judge to appear in a parliamentary commission either, because precisely the law prohibits them from revealing all their knowledge of said criminal cases.
The minister thus highlighted that the parliamentary investigation commissions “are very clearly regulated.” “And from this legal and constitutional framework it follows that the investigative commissions can neither review judicial resolutions nor bind the courts,” Bolaños warned. Thus, the minister settled that “this debate is resolved very clearly.”
Pedro Sánchez, on the other hand, insisted yesterday on the need to “normalize and subtract drama”, as defended in Moncloa, from his political relations with Carles Puigdemont and Oriol Junqueras in this new legislature and confirmed his willingness to hold several meetings with them , although still without dates. The logical thing, his team points out, is that the first meeting between Sánchez and Puigdemont will be held once the amnesty law has been approved.
In the Government, in any case, they claim to have “zero doubts” with the amnesty. “It is not an improvised law and it is agreed upon to the millimeter,” they highlight, although they admit that during its parliamentary processing some “surgical amendment” may be introduced.
And they assure that their effects will be as beneficial in defusing the Catalan conflict as the pardons already were in the previous legislature.
